


Human Development

by lost_spook



Category: Children of the Damned (1964)
Genre: Cold War, Community: hc_bingo, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Spies & Secret Agents, The Author Regrets Everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 04:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1253227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“A geneticist is always disturbed… look at your development.  It’s quite extraordinary.”</i>  They’ve known each other forever, or near enough, but it’s a long road from there to here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Human Development

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Hurt/Comfort Bingo square "loss of vision". (Metaphorical, not literal.)
> 
> I have no excuse for this: I made up cracky ships and backstory while watching this film - and then wrote serious fic for said crack!ship. It did fit the film's moral neatly, though. And gave me a bingo square.

I

David Neville breezes through his school days, working only at the things that interest him and getting to the top of the form insultingly often anyway. He makes new clubs each year, every one a joke, a game; achieves popularity without trying. He starts a club against romance of any sort and he’s the sole member: he likes exclusivity and being nonsensical, rejecting everyone else who applies. Colin isn’t one of them; he only shakes his head at David, who retaliates by giving him honorary membership.

Colin Webster works hard at everything – work, sports, play – though he’s clever enough not to, if he wanted, David’s sure. But then Colin’s never taken things as easily as David.

When they talk of the future, David’s always got ideas – he’s going to win a Nobel Prize for something, maybe a miracle cure for a terrible disease or discovering the secret of eternal life. Something small like that. Colin doesn’t know yet, something to do with history or politics, perhaps, though he doesn’t want to teach. Maybe he secretly means to change the world, too. There are some things David doesn’t know.

It’s university where things happen, away from the closed and intense world of school gossip. They share rooms, and more. David Neville now runs a Club for Perfecting the Arts of Flirtation. Colin’s a competent member, when he bothers, which he doesn’t often. David practises his skills on him, naturally, though in truth it’s the other way round: it’s the others who are merely there for practice, and it’s one game, one joke David couldn’t be more serious about.

 

*

 

II

War breaks all their dreams and builds something new out of them. David’s still working towards his medical degree, and he’s wanted for things other than for soldiering. New weapons mean new kinds of damage to be done to flesh and bone and mind, and new cures to be found. Colin, of course, signs up like the rest of them, but with a mind like his, he’s soon snatched away into military intelligence, the remainder of his war too secret to mention, even to an old friend.

They only coincide once during those years, and Colin’s guarded, closed in. Neither of them can say much about their work, and it’s an awkwardness where the old carelessness used to be, though David can cover it with nonsense. (He’s practised well; it came in handy in the end.) Anyway, it’s fine: David Neville doesn’t care to know how it feels to have blood on your hands and Colin Webster doesn’t want to talk about it.

Colin wants his mind taking off it all, though, and David obliges: gets him drunk, and takes him home. He can do that still; he remembers how to play the game.

There used to be words, though, David thinks. Far too many between them, insufferable undergraduates that they were, and now there’s just the actions, which may be what’s important, or may be mere mechanics. When he leaves later (for the first time, thinking to be careful when he does), he thinks it again, and wonders, in a moment of anger, what right anyone has to do that, to turn people into machines. But it’s only for the duration, he reminds himself, like everything else, and there’s a damned good reason for it. He’ll wait for it to be over and things’ll return to normal.

 

*

 

III

He can’t remember how long it’s been now, barring a few uninformative letters, since he’s been in touch with Colin. It seems they’ve swallowed him up, these shadowy people who hide in government departments, in the military and foreign embassies. David disapproves of that in general as well as in particular. They forget, those sorts of people, that politics isn’t necessarily the same as important. They put barriers in the way of research and forget that science ought to transcend such things.

Then one day, Colin arrives at the door, with a smile, and as if university was only yesterday after all, serenades him with a tall tale of something that happened in Bucharest. David remembers this game well, and tells Colin he’s building himself a dinosaur from some samples in the Natural History Museum.

“I thought human development was more your forté,” Colin says. “As a geneticist.”

David grins at him. “Got to try new things, old boy. Move with the times.” It’s as if nothing has changed.

But it has, and forever, so he finds when he understands what has brought Colin here. It’s not his charm, after all. Colin’s keeping an eye on him for official reasons, doesn’t think it would be wise for David to go ahead with his meeting with Herr Doktor Helfer. 

“He’s sixty-seven and not that pretty,” says David, who’s never lost that flippancy. “No need to be jealous, I assure you. I’m only after his mind.”

Colin only frowns, and starts glancing out the window. “You ought to be more careful. Look, don’t go. That’s a warning.”

“What?” David returns. “Think he might try poisoning me over coffee? I wouldn’t worry – I’ve got sensitive taste buds.”

Colin almost smiles then, but he says, “We take good care that our assets remain ours. Take it as a compliment.”

It’s not, David thinks. It’s a damned insult. Apparently they think either travel broadens the mind a little too much or that nationalities and ideologies are things you catch. Maybe they are, but Colin ought to know him better than that.

“It happens,” says Colin. “You’d be surprised.”

“It doesn’t happen with me! Why would you think that? I might not have played at cowboys and Indians along with you, but I did my bit – what I was asked to do!”

Colin only shrugs, and looks away. He says something again about being more careful, and then David understands, and the hypocrisy of it takes his breath away. Because there’s something they might be able to use against him. Colin knows that, of course, but doesn’t know that it’s only ever been him, that way – David doesn’t know why: maybe it’s trust, maybe it’s something else, maybe nothing’s that clear cut anyway. They have their first and last furious row, destroying the notion that this is or ever has been a game.

David calls it a truce, later, but neither of them apologise. It doesn’t matter; they can still use a hundred, a thousand, light words to cover the gaps. He still wonders, though, if pragmatism’s all that’s left of love or even friendship – if Colin only came back because he’d been told Dr Neville may be useful. David chooses to think, though, even at worst, that it’s something neither of them know.

 

*

 

IV

David Neville understands, finally, after the fighting in the old church, after they’ve killed Colin, how it is that you learn that cold pragmatism, how to balance one life, a few lives, against a billion, a million, a thousand, less maybe. Six alien lives against one human life, if it comes down to it – and it does.

This is how one moves onwards, progresses to seeing people mere as game pieces that may or may not be sacrificed. When the stakes are high enough, it’s strategy that matters, not the value of individuals. This is the place that Colin went, that he never came back from: a world where the war never ended, though the risks, the losses were invisible to the rest of them. He understands why now they call it the Cold War – or maybe it’s only that all wars are cold at the heart.

It’s not a place David Neville wants to stay, but it seems to be an inevitable destination. From knowledge to reason to icy strategy to total destruction. Either way, they’re travelling to something that’s more or less than human now.

He doesn’t believe he cares any more.


End file.
